Saturday, December 16, 2017

Last of the Lights at least for now







More Zoolights






Zoolights at the National Zoo



Here's a description of it from the National Zoo's website:
Join the thousands of visitors who make ZooLights a part of their annual holiday tradition. A free event, ZooLights includes live music performances, tasty winter treats and plenty of opportunities for holiday shopping. More than 500,000 environmentally-friendly LED lights transform the Zoo into a winter wonderland complete with a dazzling light show set to music!







Tuesday, October 10, 2017

2Political Podcast Episode 124



2Political Podcast Episode 124 is now available. You can listen to it or download it from the podcast site, 2political.com. You can leave comments there as well as download or listen to any episode (you can access the five most recent episodes from the list on the right side of my blog).

We’ve been gone for a long time. This episode is about the unexpected reason for that.

This episode was recorded the end of September, but Arthur’s busy work schedule kept him from editing it. That’s pretty insignificant, really.

Everyone's welcome to leave a comment—agree or disagree!

Links for this episode:
"The day I could have died, but didn’t" The blog post Arthur mentioned, with the commercial he talked about.
Jason’s Blog
Arthur’s blog, podcasts and videos can be accessed here.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

A Trip to the Beach

I took a trip to Reboboth Beach. It was a nice way to get away and take a break from everything.

I left a little before 6am. Didn't run into much traffic in DC which was a nice change of pace. I will say that traffic coming into DC along route 50 was back up. There was some sort of an accident. Glad I don't have that commute.

Here are a few pictures of my trip.




Crossing the Bay Bridge

Dawn had just started when I started crossing the Bay Bridge. Then a further down the road the sun started to come up.






On the Beach

It was a nice warm day. Warmer than normal. I was surprised at the number of people on the beach. Part of it was the weather I'm sure. But also lots of people like going to the beach.

One of a couple of kites I saw.

Great waves



Getting my feet wet




Birds on the Beach

Saw these guys up and down the beach. They'd scurry away when a wave came in.





The Reason I've Been Gone — I had a Heart Attack

I haven't been blogging for a while. The reason is that in July I had a heart attack.

Here's my post to Facebook describing what happened:

I’m going to share what happened to me last week.

I’m doing this so people will avoid the terrible mistake that I made.

A mistake that was almost fatal.

So here goes:

A week ago Friday I had a heart attack.

Yes, a week ago Friday I had a heart attack which my doctor described as bad.

A week ago Friday I had a bad heart attack which more than one doctor and nurse said I was lucky as in I was lucky to have survived it.

A week ago Friday I had a bad heart attack because one of my arteries was 95% blocked. It was the artery in the front of my heart. I had a Stent put in to open it up.

I was in the hospital for four days. I was told I’m young and in fairly good shape so with diet, exercise and proper medication I should be fine. I am alive which is the most important thing.

Now here is my MISTAKE.

Although I had a heart attack a week ago Friday it was not my first heart attack.

No, my first heart attack was Thursday morning. And I ignored the signs.

That’s right I ignored the signs!!!

I had started back working out with weights that week as well as swimming. While swimming the back stroke that day I pulled something in my left arm.

About five minutes after I left the pool I had pain in my chest and arm. I thought oh I really did over do it this time because it really hurts. I’ve had a muscle spasm before and thought well that’s what this it. But it seemed a little more intense then that.

I walked home. Still didn’t feel any better. I took some aspirin. I sat down and in a short time felt better. The pain didn't entirely go away but it felt like pain from just working out too much.

I went on with the rest of my day. Went out to lunch. Volunteered.
Friday I decided I was going to stay in and just rest. Then along came Friday night and POW. It felt like someone was hitting my chest and left arm with a baseball bat continuously.

I knew this time what was happening — I was having a heart attack.

I thought wow what an idiot. You ignored the symptoms of the first one.

I told my story to doctors and nurses at the hospital. There response was that this happens all the time. People ignore symptoms and thus ignore their first heart attack. My room mate told a similar story of having symptoms but ignoring them.

When people imagine having a heart attack, they imagine you drop to the ground in pain. Think of all the times on TV or movies when someone is shown having a heart attack that’s what usually happens a person drops to the ground.

The other thing that happens is that the symptoms pass and you think you’re all right.

But that’s not the truth.

So if you have some strange pain in your chest or arms, don’t ignore it.

Don’t rationalize it away.

Don’t think everything is fine because the pain goes away.

Get your butt to an emergency room as quickly as possible and get checked out.

It just might save your life.

 

Monday, July 17, 2017

A Rainbow Today


A storm came along this afternoon and produced this beautiful rainbow.







Some Beautiful Flowers



I got my hair cut yesterday. I went to the Newseum afterwards and saw these beauties on my walk there.

The size of the blossoms on these hibiscus is amazing.